icy52097+(scg)

Susan

**The Universe and Beyond**

The Universe is a mysterious place. There are so many theories about how the universe was formed, what happened before the Big Bang and about other civilizations that might exist in our universe. Scientists don’t have full proof on most of their theories but they do have evidence that leads to forming new and improved theories about our universe. There are also dreams of being able to travel to other galaxies or solar systems. These dreams would be hard to accomplish but they are possible. Read on to find out more about these extraordinary theories and possibilities. __**Theories**__ One theory is that there have been many big bangs forming a cycle- a “Cyclic Universe”. There is much proof that the big bang did in fact occur because Arnold Penzias and Robert Wilson found background radiation from that time. However, there is no proof that that was the very beginning of time and space. In a “Cyclic Universe”, what ever happens at the end of one universe, affects the next one. According to the second law, disorder always increases. The Big Bang is described as being an explosion of energy, forming galaxies and stars. But our universe isn’t as chaotic as it should be, so something must have happened before the Big Bang to decrease the amount of chaos. In a cyclic universe, whatever happened before the Big Bang would continue occurring at the end of each universe, affecting the structure of the next one to come. That would explain why there is a smaller amount of disorder. There are some issues with the Big Bang Theory. The first is the flatness problem. Einstein’s equation states that anything not flat in an expanding universe that’s filled with matter and radiation, must grow or expand along with the universe as it expands. Anything that wasn’t flat in the beginning of our universe should have grown to be huge by now. If things are smaller than they would be now, then they must have been unbelievably small after the Big Bang. Why was it all so small? Whatever happened before the Big Bang would help answer this question. The second issue is the Horizon problem. Horizon is the distance a particle can travel as the universe expands. The cosmic microwave backgound radiation that we have seen is very smooth in all directions and our horizon is too small for the smoothness to have been created by thermalization. The only way the radiation could be so smooth is through particle collisions. But particles can't move faster than the speed of light, and the size of our universe is so big it would be impossible for these particles to travel from one side of the universe to the next at the speed of light in time to make sense with the smooth radiation. The possibility that there might be other civilizations out there like ours has always been something people wonder about. If it takes an average of 4.6 billion years to develop a civilization like ours then there should be quite a few out there. What we don’t know is when these civilizations die out because some might be long gone by now. It’s scary to think that Planet Earth is the only planet with life. This thought is very unlikely because our universe is packed with galaxies. One of them is bound to have some form of life, although scientists don’t know what form of life this would be. Planets that can obtain life need to be a perfect distance from their solar systems star like our Planet Earth. Scientists think there are many of these types of planets out there. __**Future Possibilities**__ Interstellar travel is such a mind-blowing concept, but is it possible? People traveling wouldn’t be able to go faster than the speed of light, but stars are so far apart that the ship would have to travel at the speed of light to get anywhere within a human lifetime. Scientists are looking for a way to increase the speed that we can travel by, about 10,000 times faster than the speed spaceships can travel by today. It would cost a lot of money and the spaceship might be powered by atomic energy or something a little more unusual like antimatter. Facilities in space, on asteroids or on our moon would help us to collect materials would be needed to reach such a speed. Another way to find enough energy to succeed this kind of interstellar travel would be to use nuclear bombs, even though that can be dangerous. It would be a great risk to do interstellar travel though because 2 years traveling at the speed of light in space is equal to 50 years here on Earth. That means that people would come back from their trips and find a whole new world when they return, because a lot can change in 50 years. Would anyone want to risk losing 50 years of life on Earth just to see the wonders of space? An interstellar civilization would help the human race last for billions of years. But, it would take at least 73 years to get to the nearest star system; a whole generation of humans would have to live on the ship for their whole life before settling in on another planet. A possibility, although scary and extraordinary, is that we could put a generation of babies to grow up and live on the ship. Unless we find a way to extend the life-span of humans or a way to stop growth for a period of time, that’s what we may end up doing. Another problem is that whoever pays for such a ship would probably never get to see it again; they would be gone by the time it came back. __**The Ending of the Universe**__ The universe will remain hospitable to life for at least another 100 billion years. Nothing lasts forever, so the universe may become impossible to live in. A main theory about how the universe will end is called “The Big Crunch”, which is pretty much the opposite of the Big Bang. Gravity would bring the expansion of the universe to a halt and then the universe would collapse into a dissolving fireball. The way the fireball would form is that the galaxies would collide at first slowly and then more rapidly. This fireball would eventually collapse into itself forming a giant black hole with the mass of our universe. Time and space would be over. Maybe the black whole would provide energy for the next universe to come.

There is so much that we do not know about our universe but we are discovering more each year as technology advances. Hopefully scientists continue to uncover more information about our universe and answer the millions of questions that people have about our universe. There are some questions that may take years to answer, but we are well on our way to knowing more than we ever imagined we would about time, space, the universe, and beyond.

Bibliography:

Dickinson, Terence. __The Universe and Beyond.__ Kingston: Firefly Books, 2004

Bennet, Jeffrey, Donahue, Megan, Schneider, Nicholas and Mark Voit. __The Cosmic Perspective.__ United States: Addison Wesley Longman, 2000

Ferris, Timothy. "How Will The Universe End? (With A Bang or A Whimper?)" How Will The Universe End? (With A Bang or A Whimper?). (Apr 10, 2000) Time.com. Time Magazine. 7 Dec. 2010 Martin Luther School.

Steinhardt, Paul. "A Cyclic Universe." __SEEDMAGAZINE.COM__ (Jul 2, 2007). SeedMagazine.com. Martin Luther King School. 7 Dec. 2010

"What came before the Big Bang?". Superstringtheory.com. 2010, http://superstringtheory.com/cosmo/cosmo4.html (15 Dec. 2010) 31 Chilton St.

"Dark Energy, Dark Matter". Science.NASA.gov. 2010, http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/ (15 Dec. 2010). 31 Chilton St.

"Stephen Hawking: The Story of Everything: Videos: Science Channel." Science Channel: Space, Technology, Earth Science, Geology. Web. 21 Dec. 2010. 